There are times one reads something so historically inaccurate it is stunning to the eye. This morning was such a time.
In a speech at the Atlantic Councils Global Citizen Awards affair yesterday European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen after introducing Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the following," Many of your relatives lost their lives when an atomic bomb razed Hiroshima to the ground. You have grown up with the stories of the survivors and you wanted us to listen to the same stories to face the past and learn something about the future".
Describing the experience as "sobering" she went on to say "when Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons once again". [1]
If you as the reader are as stunned as I was reading that sentence it is quite understandable.
Anyone, even with a limited educational background knows it was the US that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in early August 1945 and days later dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. It certainly wasn't the USSR which didn't declare war on the Japanese till two days later.
What is equally astounding is "von der Leyen made no mention of the US in her speech."
Is von der Leyen's Russo phobia so complete she has to insinuate it was Russia that dropped those atomic bombs on Japan?
Was she absent that day in school in Hanover, Germany when her history teacher must have informed the class it was the US dropping those atomic bombs on Japan 1945?
What is also well known there have been no nuclear weapons dropped on an enemy since that time.
Of course here in America there are times one gets exposed to historical accounts that have since shown to be inaccurate, even lies when one delves deeper. Here are a few that come to mind:
I distinctly remember being taught about "Manifest Destiny" in high school where it was presented as the natural westward expansion of the US. Certainly not the stealing of those lands from the indigenous "Indian" peoples. They were condemned as "savages" anyway who were attacking peaceful pioneers attempting to settle on those "vacant" western lands.
There was the Mexican War in 1848 which the US government blamed on Mexico. As booty for the US winning that war we annexed from Mexico what is now most of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and western Colorado. Hey, to the winner goes the spoils.
How about the Warren Commission's final report on the JFK assassination. They concluded Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. Yet too much evidence has come to light revealing multiple shots were fired at a distance to the front of the presidents car indicating it was conspiracy committed by many others. Oswald was just a patsy to blame it on.
Then there was the torture of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, 2004 where only low level GI's were blamed and held accountable. Yet no high level officials in the Bush administration who actually authorized the use of torture (enhanced interrogation) were ever held accountable.
So for sure we've been fed lots of misinformation, distortions, outright lies especially today with the internet.
But getting back to von der Leyen. Again is her Russo phobia so complete she now insinuates it was Russia that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945?
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